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Android Theming With KLWP

When I find the time, I enjoy customizing my Android’s homescreen using what I believe to be the best theming tool available on any mobile operating system– Kustom Live Wallpaper (KLWP). In Kustom, adding animations to objects is a breeze. With a little bit of time and effort, the average user can produce a highly personalized theme.

This summer, I have spent a good chunk of time designing themes that somehow incorporate animated objects. Smoke rising is one animation I’ve found is very easy to animate and is also very satisfying to watch. Below, I’ve shared a handful of themes I’ve created in the last few months.

Material Drone

The drone fly in effect was created in Kustom with slide and scale-in animations. The theme was inspired by the work of J. Amourrette. He has created some very sleek themes with Kustom–they can be viewed on his Google+ page here.

A Coffee Theme

Nova Prime Launcher Kustom Live WallpaperTiny Black Icons

I used an image of smoke with a transparent background to animate the steam rising from the coffee. Scale-in, slide, and rotate effects were used to simulate the steam rising.

Orange & Blue

Nova Prime Launcher Kustom Live WallpaperGoogle Material Design Icons

I liked the contrast of the light blue, orange, and dark gray color. I decided to use the orange and blue colors in alternation for the icons and the clock. The unlock effect consists of a simple slide animation and a scale-in animation for the gray backdrop.

This theme is inspired by Google’s Material Design specifications. The font is Geometos and the plane and drop down animations were created in Kustom.

Mario Theme

A tribute to perhaps the best video game of all time, the animations necessary to create this theme took quite a bit of trial and error to produce.

Material Rocket

Nova Prime Launcher Kustom Live WallpaperLollipop Icons

I used an image of a rocket with a transparent background to that matched well with Google’s Material Design. Slide in and rotation animations to animate the rocket’s launch and descent.

Blues Bros

Nova Prime Launcher Kustom Live WallpaperGoogle Material Design Icons

The wallpaper was the main inspiration for this theme. The black suit and tie is reminiscent of the 1980’s flick, Blues Brothers. I decided to add some flavor to the theme, by placing a cigarette in the man’s mouth. I used an image of black smoke with a transparent background to animate the smoke rising from the cigarette. Scale-in, slide, and rotate effects were used to animate the smoke rising.

Ocean Scene

Nova Prime Launcher Kustom Live WallpaperLollipop Icons

I found a few images of boats on Google with transparent backgrounds and animated their navigation across the screen using Kustom. I particularly like this theme because of the music and weather rectangles that slide outwards from behind the time.

Album Cover

Nova Prime Launcher Kustom Live Wallpaper

This simplistic theme is intended to emphasize the album artwork of whatever song you are playing at the time. As this theme demonstrates, I’ve taken a liking to one page themes as of late. Instead of having multiple pages, I add switches and toggles to reveal other windows while staying on the same screen. I’ve found my phone runs smoother from this alternative approach as well.